Following the blog entries of the last two days, today I
would add that the royal road to mastery of skills and knowledge is not “gear,
gear, gear” but “practise, practise, practise”.
Christopher Bergland, in his Psychology Today article No.1 Reason Practice Makes Perfect,
explains why, as the title of his article says, practice makes perfect. The “#1
reason”, he argues, is the cerebellum of the human brain.
Bergland learned about, and developed his fascination of,
the cerebellum from his father. Although the cerebellum, or the “down brain” as
Bergland calls it (in Latin, it means “little brain”), is much small than the
cerebrum or, to use Bergland’s term again, the “up brain”, it holds more than
50% of the brain’s neurons. Because of this disproportionate distribution of
neurons Bergland father always said of the cerebellum, "Whatever it's
doing, it's doing a lot of it."
When the father taught the son to play tennis at a young
age, his coaching was based on an understanding that muscle memory is stored in
the cerebellum, and one has to do the same thing again and again and again to
hardwire it into long-term muscle memory that is stored in the cerebellum. So
his tennis coaching mantra to the son was "Carve the grooves into the
cerebellum". The whole rationale was that the cerebellum is the house of
the intuitive "subconscious mind". To create super fluid performance,
one has to harness the intuitive powers of the cerebellum and have his actions
spring from there. One also has to avoid being too analytical because, as Arthur
Ashe said, "there is a syndrome in sports called 'paralysis by
analysis'." Thinking too much not only blocks the cerebellum from working
but also leads to over-excitement or even, in some bad cases, choking.
But this is easier said than done. It is because the
cerebrum, the part of the brain that is responsible for thinking, is so big and
powerful that it is hard to keep it quiet.
The only way to do it is, you've guessed it, practise,
practise, practise.
No comments:
Post a Comment